[KERI0323]

I’m curious to know if anyone has taken additional IT courses as part of a college program. I took an IT auditing course as part of my masters program and it covered pretty much the same Becker review material in the IT section. I feel like I understand the material and then I see posts where candidates say the IT part threw them for a loop and I doubt what I think I understand. Do any of you have other experience with IT whether though an additional course or hands on experience?

BEC 10/11/2010 77
AUD 11/30/2010 81
REG 02/25/2011 78
FAR 11/28/2011 74,68, 83 and DONE!!! NTS LA #460

[Florida_Candidate]

the IT did throw me for a loop on the test, but I have NEVER had an IT auditing course. I have a feeling if you actually took a course on this stuff you'll have a much deeper understanding than I did. I just read becker and not having any kind of background education in it, it was hard to really “grasp” the material 🙂

FAR-91 (7/29)
AUD-99 (8/23)
BEC-90 (10/1)
REG-99 (11/3)

[Anonymous]

There are some really random questions in the IT section of BEC. I'd say most of what is on the exam is boiler plate stuff that is covered by the various review programs. However, the random questions are just random that someone thought would be a good question. In order to cover all those random topics would require a review course several orders of magnitude longer than what we have. If you cover the stuff in the review courses you should know enough that the few random questions won't impact you too much.

[Sam2k]

I started out as a Computer Science major before switching to business and then to accounting, so I've had several extra IT courses. I found Becker's IT section extremely dated with regards to the technologies they discuss, like putting an emphasis on VANs(which I had never heard of and Wikipedia suggested hadn't evolved since the '60s). My actual exam questions were much more current and I don't know that any of them were specifically covered in the Becker material. I only briefly skimmed the B4 Technical Addendum before the exam, so that may or may not contain good relevant information.

FAR - 98; AUD - 94; REG - 95; BEC - Waiting;
Becker Scholarship for Success (I got it free :))

[potatogun]

Having an IT background just from my own experience, reading BEC4 makes me cringe a lot. I think the hard part is for many people who are unfamiliar with IT (that accountants probably care about more than anyone who actually works in IT). The basic part I am going to take away from it is segregation of duties. Although the AICPA apparently wants you to have a basic understanding technology topics, I am fairly certain most workers won't need to understand the merits of WPA2 AES vs TKIP or what IEEE standards partain to what is branded “wifi” (802.11 stuff), etc, etc, etc.

Sam2k what would you say are the general areas of theory to know regarding IT and not the nitty gritty of acronyms or familiarity with assorted topics such as VLANs, DNS, RAID, DHCP…blah blah blah?

FAR 92 - AUD 91 - REG 94 - BEC 86

[whitesoxfancpa]

Dale,

Do you think the material in the Becker text is enough, or do you feel it's necessary to study and understand the technical addendum and glossary that I could get online?

Thanks.

AUD 96 FAR 95 REG 94 BEC 88

[Florida_Candidate]

I don't want to worry you but I don't know if either was helpful :-/ the becker material definitely is a little helpful. I read the whole addendum and honestly don't remember what was on it but I don't remember thinking “I'm glad I read the addendum” during the exam or anything. Maybe that's cause I didn't remember it though lol

FAR-91 (7/29)
AUD-99 (8/23)
BEC-90 (10/1)
REG-99 (11/3)

[Sam2k]

potatogun, I had this rambling long post about the merits of theory vs. “nitty gritty” and then I saw Dale's sig quote about “[reading] the Cocka-doody question” so this is the revised version! Hope it answers the question.

I don't know if I'm really qualified to tell you which areas of theory you should study. I think that Becker's “theory parts” were reasonably useful, it is just their “this technology does this and is important for business for this reason” sections that are dated. Focusing on theory, will, I believe, get you farther than focusing on technologies, which quickly change, but you do still need to know important technologies. I think I would be most familiar with technologies that relate to a network environment (how information is shared and protected, how systems are audited, and yes a bunch of acronyms and terms), but I certainly wouldn't neglect other technologies and I wouldn't do an exhaustive study by any means, One thing I find useful when I come across a tech concept that I don't really understand is looking it up on Wikipedia, reading the article and following references that catch my eye. Just spending 10-15 minutes perusing the articles will give you enough background that you just might understand the concept and remember it. Of course, you might just get lucky and have an exam question on something that you had read an article about!

FAR - 98; AUD - 94; REG - 95; BEC - Waiting;
Becker Scholarship for Success (I got it free :))

[potatogun]

Hi Sam2k,

That's for taking the time to respond. I am not concerned with not being familiar with a technology mentioned or an acronym I don't know, because I will honestly probably know it.

I am wondering if the questions are more along the lines of what benefit does a database management system provide to a company? vs what does DBMS stand for?

You did mention sharing or protecting information so is this more along the lines of fileservers and shares exist or is it more what is a LAN or what is a fileserver? Or perhaps you should use encryption vs which encryption is best?

Thanks for your input.

FAR 92 - AUD 91 - REG 94 - BEC 86

[Sam2k]

I think the questions were much more along the lines of “what is a benefit of x” or “company desires benefit x and has narrowed their decision down to the following technologies, which one provides x benefit” than “what does x mean/stand for.” For my networking suggestion(and that's just what it is), I think all of those would be fair game but I really would suggest studying network concepts because they will help you indirectly rather than actually expecting “what is a fileserver” type questions. Also, protecting information does not just have to do with encryption and networking but also IT Controls which I think is an identified part of the content specification outline.

FAR - 98; AUD - 94; REG - 95; BEC - Waiting;
Becker Scholarship for Success (I got it free :))

[Author]

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